The Ugandan government should reverse its ban on speech and demonstrations linked to the trial of the main opposition candidate for president, Dr. Kizza Besigye, and end its intimidation of the courts, Human Rights Watch said this week. The government issued the ban on speech and demonstrations on November 22 following criticism of the security forces’ interference in a hearing related to the Besigye case. “In an eight-day span, the Ugandan government has seriously damaged its human rights reputation by riding roughshod over the rights of political opponents and the courts,” said Jemera Rone, Uganda researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government has arrested the main presidential opponent, used commandos to intimidate the judiciary and banned all public protests, radio discussions and even posters on the subject.”

As improbable as it may sound, a group of 170,000 refugees living in tents in the middle of the Sahara, sustained by international aid, have formed a nation in every sense of the word. This paper has provided a theoretical framework for explaining why and how this can occur, and just as important, has obtained and highlighted empirical data to support it. As a result, it better enables one to hear, and to truly understand, the stories of a nation.

Some 60,000 people fleeing fighting between the Congolese army and local Mayi-Mayi militiamen resisting demobilisation have now arrived in the village of Dubie in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province, Roman Catholic Bishop Fulgence Muteba said. He said the 60,000 displaced in Dubie were in addition to another 16,000 people who fled the fighting against a local Mayi-Mayi leader he identified as Gedeon. So far, no other humanitarian agency has corroborated the number of displaced in Dubie.

In yet another deceitful move by rich industrialised nations to aggressively access developing country markets, the just released draft WTO Ministerial text on Services is deliberately ambiguous on whether developing countries will have any choice but to enter into services negotiations when requested to do so. Such a process would be reminiscent of the disastrous negotiations which took place on Telecoms and Financial services in the WTO in 1997. Said Aileen Kwa of Focus on the Global South, “This is the real agenda in Hong Kong. Whilst Pascal Lamy downplays Hong Kong so that everyone else is caught off guard, what is really at stake is developing countries' control over their service sectors. And that includes essential services such as water, education and healthcare.”

At least 12 people have been killed in northern Uganda during an ambush by suspected rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, LRA. The attackers shot at a minibus full of people in broad daylight as it approached the town of Pader. The minibus was set ablaze and as the passengers tried to escape from the burning vehicle they were attacked.

Three African presidents visiting Ivory Coast have failed to broker a deal over a new prime minister, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has said. Mr Obasanjo and the leaders of South Africa and Niger had hoped to choose a prime minister acceptable to President Laurent Gbagbo and Ivorian rebels. But Mr Obasanjo said he did not view the mission as a failure, adding that talks would resume within 10 days.

A war of the future is being waged right now in the sprawling desert region of northeastern Africa known as Sudan, writes David Morse in this Znet article. "The weapons themselves are not futuristic. None of the ray-guns, force-fields, or robotic storm troopers that are the stuff of science fiction; nor, for that matter, the satellite-guided Predator drones or other high-tech weapon systems at the cutting edge of today's arsenal. No, this war is being fought with Kalashnikovs, clubs and knives. In the western region of Sudan known as Darfur, the preferred tactics are burning and pillaging, castration and rape - carried out by Arab militias riding on camels and horses." Morse argues that the war is a resource war over oil.

African Union (AU) and United States mediators are trying to reconcile the divided leadership of the largest rebel group in Darfur ahead of the resumption of the peace talks later this week, an AU official said. The leaders of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) are under pressure to resolve their internal differences and present a united front at the next session of the delayed peace negotiations in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, which had been scheduled to start on 21 November.

The Cairo office of the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, closed indefinitely on Sunday, bringing its operations relating to asylum applicants to a halt following a mass sit-in by Sudanese asylum seekers and refugees. Some 3,000 Sudanese, who have now been camped a mere 200 metres away from UNHCR premises for two months, also declared a hunger strike.

An Ethiopian court denied bail on Monday to 23 opponents of the government accused of inciting violence in Addis Ababa in early November. At least 42 people were shot dead when police confronted demonstrators in the capital after the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) called for new protests against May polls it says the government manipulated. Four more people were killed in clashes elsewhere in subsequent days. The government denies ballot fraud.

Eritrea's president has accused Ethiopia of raising the spectre of renewed conflict between the two neighbours over their disputed border as a ploy to distract attention from Ethiopia's domestic troubles. Military manoeuvres on both sides of an unmarked 1,000 km (620 mile) frontier between the feuding Horn of Africa neighbours have raised international concern about a possible repeat of their 1998-2000 border war that killed 70,000 people.

A former mayor accused of helping to kill several thousand people during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. Paul Bisengimana, the former mayor of Gikoro, changed his plea after prosecutors dropped 10 other charges. He told a war crimes court that he was a witness to, and had participated in, the massacre of thousands of ethnic Tutsis seeking refuge in a church.

The release and re-arrest of members of a Yoruba organisation this week (November 17) have marked the latest chapter in Nigeria's bid to contain ethnic unrest in various parts of the country. Fredrick Fasehun and Gani Adams, leaders of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), were initially jailed with four other members of the group after clashes broke out in the commercial capital of Lagos last month between rival OPC supporters.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum has released a damning report on how government failed to comply with the African Commission on Human and Peoples_ Rights (ACHPR) recommendations to stop widespread human rights violations in the country. The report coincides with the African Commission meeting in Banjul, Gambia, the last week in November, which is expected to discuss the human rights situation in Zimbabwe.

"Through the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) African Heads of State and Government have made a commitment to human rights and accountability in Africa. We are calling on African leaders to honour these commitments and end their long silence on human rights violations in Zimbabwe. Today in Zimbabwe, hundreds of thousands of people are internally displaced and destitute, not because of a war, an earthquake or a tsunami, but because their own government has forcibly evicted them, demolished their homes, and destroyed their property and their livelihoods. These acts, totally unjustifiable under international law, have been widely condemned. However, African States have remained conspicuously silent and have not demonstrated the political will to respond to the human rights crisis in Zimbabwe."

The following study focuses on self-settled refugees who were once living in camps, but are presently self-settled and living in Koboko. Most of these refugees fled the settlements due to insecurity, others left in search of economic opportunities in town, yet others were used to an urban lifestyle in their home countries and are altogether ill-equipped for life as subsistence farmers in refugee settlements.

Hundreds of Somali refugees have been protesting for almost a week in front of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) premises. With their families and children, they staged a sit-in and expressed their demands for improving their current legal, economic and social living condition. They demanded equal consideration similar to other refugees such as the Ethiopians, whom they claim have better treatment. Yemen hosts a number of refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Iraq and Palestine, along with other small numbers of refugees from other countries.

Professor Mesfin Woldemariam 75, former chair of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), has lately started a hunger strike, calling upon all people touched by the on-going human rights violations to join him until justice prevails in the plight of the Human Rights Defenders under threat in Ethiopia. EHRCO is a co-founder of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (EHAHRDN).

This 66-page report documents how refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa’s largest city often encounter abuse by police and other obstacles throughout the refugee-status determination process. “On paper, South Africa has exemplary laws to protect refugees and asylum seekers,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “But in practice, the government is failing to provide protection to these vulnerable individuals.” South Africa hosts approximately 142,000 refugees and asylum seekers. Many of them have fled conflict areas and persecution in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe.

Weak government controls are failing to stop diamonds from fuelling conflict, according to a new report by Global Witness. The report, Making it Work: Why the Kimberley Process Must Do More to Stop Conflict Diamonds, targets the annual meeting of the Kimberley Process Plenary starting today (Nov. 15) in Moscow. The report shows how diamonds from Cote d’Ivoire are being mined in rebel-held areas and are then smuggled through neighbouring countries to international markets; Liberian diamonds, although subject to UN sanctions, are being certified by the Kimberley Process and exported from neighbouring countries; weak regulation of diamond cutting and polishing factories leaves centres vulnerable to the trade in conflict diamonds.